


Wolfsbane

by Classpectanon



Series: Three Hundred And Sixty Five Ficlets About Homestuck [9]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (Nobody gets poisoned but it gets discussed), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, F/F, Magic, Poison, Potions, Spirits, Werewolves, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28662561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Classpectanon/pseuds/Classpectanon
Summary: By the time she had actually reached the tower of Rose Lalonde, the storm had begun in earnest, soaking through her furs with intense piles of snow, leaving her covered in drowning white. She was quite cold, yes, but better to be cold in clothes like this than cold in her normal billowy greenhouse wear. Approaching the massive double doors with knuckles chattering, she took a deep breath and knocked twice, as politely as she could manage while also making it very clear that she was sinfully cold.It took a couple of moments. For the next thirty seconds, Jade was gripped with some sort of odd, humorous anxiety, almost ready to begin chuckling at herself. Was the tower empty, and Jade meant to suffer in the cold until she could find a way to knock the door in? Were the stories and tales all falsehoods? Was the dwelling secretly a ruin, or worse, a dungeon?No. No it wasn't.9/365
Relationships: Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde
Series: Three Hundred And Sixty Five Ficlets About Homestuck [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085684
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Wolfsbane

The trek was long, daresay, arduous, with a swirling storm beginning to gather her clouds overhead. It wasn't raining yet, but a single mountainous snowflake had made its presence apparent on Jade's shoulder, followed by another. In the distance, a clap of thunder rocked the trees, disturbing ravens and crows and the gulls from the coast, sending them into the frozen clouds above. When you glanced, they never appeared to be moving much, if at all, but looking for longer revealed the true magic, the way they drifted along lazily in the sky. Totally unperturbed.

Jade was prepared for this occurrence, of course. Like all good witches, she had a very good hat, with a nice, wide brim, although it was strapped to her head to prevent being blown away in the wind. Her typical robes had been swapped out for something a little more appropriate for the climate, warm furs over a leather tunic over some further layers. Sitting on her neck, the smooth, bright green cabochon gemstone shimmered, almost glowing in the presence of the magical field she was venturing into. A small rucksack was carried along her back - for anyone else, it might be a significant hampering element, but Jade was no ordinary witch, and was more than comfortable with the additional weight.

Rounding the corners on the barely-a-road leading up the mountainside, eventually, her end-goal came into view. And right on time, too! She adjusted her steadily fogging glasses as a bolt of lightning piqued her curiosity in the corners of her eyes, distracting her momentarily. She stood there, as the snowstorm began to encircle her, staring at the vast ocean of trees below, the actual sea just close enough to be seen, rounding the edges of the horizon with its imperceptible blue-green-gray-brown of oceanwater. She kept walking.

By the time she had actually reached the tower of Rose Lalonde, the storm had begun in earnest, soaking through her furs with intense piles of snow, leaving her covered in drowning white. She was quite cold, yes, but better to be cold in clothes like this than cold in her normal billowy greenhouse wear. Approaching the massive double doors with knuckles chattering, she took a deep breath and knocked twice, as politely as she could manage while also making it very clear that she was sinfully cold.

It took a couple of moments. For the next thirty seconds, Jade was gripped with some sort of odd, humorous anxiety, almost ready to begin chuckling at herself. Was the tower empty, and Jade meant to suffer in the cold until she could find a way to knock the door in? Were the stories and tales all falsehoods? Was the dwelling secretly a ruin, or worse, a dungeon?

No. No it wasn't.

This was evidenced immediately by the arrival of the alchemist, Rose Lalonde, slowly opening up the left door. Jade did not bother asking for permission, only charging in past her and discarding her soaking outer layers onto the stone ground, basking in the hearth-warmed interior. "Yes, you are allowed in, do come in, thank you for asking." Rose said, an odd sort of smile on her face as she shut the door and the endless river current of frigid air was dammed off. Jade was... not really listening. Her tunic came off next, leaving her only in what were, essentially, a slightly less billowy version of her greenhouse robes, although with an additional layer of fabric or two.

She danced around a little bit as the feeling returned in her fingers in the form of tingly warmth that quickly bloomed into somewhat painful spines of nervous sensation. She didn't care - she continued to prance in a circle much like a deer or a nervous, excited dog, before realizing that there was a source, Devils above, a source, for this wondrous heat, making her way over to the roaring, violet-fired hearth and sitting down in front of it.

"Hello?" Rose asked, an undercurrent of nervousness reaching into her voice. Did a deaf wanderer perhaps make her way into her dwelling? She did know most forms of pictographic language and the ability to make potions of telepathic linking, if necessary, but-

"Hi!" Jade shouted suddenly, with little regard for volume or tone. She twitched her head around like a woodland animal just catching sight of a human, and then adjusted the rest of her body to match, sighing as the warmth began scraping against her back. "Sorry. It's- It's very cold outside!"

"I noticed." Rose joked. "It frequently is, on a mountaintop, very cold outside."

"Yeah! I mean, probably! Why do you live on a mountain anyway?" Jade immediately ask, and Rose got the most striking sensation of an individual with a distinct lack of social graces. It struck her as immensely charming, for some reason she couldn't quite place.

"Lots of storms. It's much harder to gather lightning anywhere else." Rose admitted, gently bobbing her head up and down in nodding, removing a wand from her satchel and swishing a wooden chair over for her to sit upon (backwards, arms on the back of the chair, whole body leaning forward slightly in intrigue).

Jade's entire body perked up at once, more than her already perked-up body had been moments ago. It seemed like it was impossible for a human to sound and look more invested in someone's words, and yet, here Jade was, achieving the impossible with some regularity. "Oh, wow! A lot of people said you bottled lightning, but I didn't believe them. Can I see sometime?"

Rose laughed. "It seems odd to me that someone so clearly dressed in a witch's garb to express skepticism of the craft, but sure, I'll show you "sometime". Before we get to showing you any bottles, or the contents therein, though, I must know - why are you here?" Rose replied, lifting one forearm up so she could rest her chin on the tops of her knuckles.

Jade rubbed her chin in thought for a moment. "Well, if you have to get that personal--" Rose raised an eyebrow, but let her speak, "I don't follow any particular mystery cult or church. So, uh, the normal processes of my-"

Rose snapped her fingers to interrupt. "I don't mean your origin, Miss Skepticism, I mean, you, personally, why are you here, geographically, in my home, where many are not even capable of finding much less traveling to? I do enjoy my solitude, which you've so rudely interrupted." She interjected. Despite the acerbic content of her sentences, her tone was even, almost a little motherly, with a sort of gently worried, "are-you-okay?" sort of timbre, and otherwise good humor.

Jade didn't need to think a moment for that one. "Wolfsbane potion! I need you to make a Wolfsbane potion. Draught. Uh, infusion. Whichever." Jade explained, rubbing the back of her head, not bothering to explain the months of research and preparation that went into not only finding Rose's tower but also the actual trek itself lasting a good two months or so from her home. Rose's eyebrow, if it were even possible to do so, raised even higher.

"That's strikingly mundane. You couldn't have gotten it from your everyday herbalist?" Rose asked. "It's not like it's an uncommon plant."

"Right, right, no, I grow my own, I don't trust other herbalists to do it right." Jade responded, reaching into her rucksack (now sitting on the ground next to her) and pulling out some of the largest looking wolfsbane flowers, with attached stems Rose had ever seen in her life - ginormous, vibrant purple, and striking.

"And I imagine you'd sought out me because you similarly distrust the average alchemist chaff, and decided to spring for the most extraordinary your mind could consider?" Rose asked.

"Yeah! I need you to help me make a really, really exceptional draught." Jade replied, nodding vigorously.

Now it was Rose's turn to rub her chin. "Hmm. No." She gave, at a moment's consideration.

Jade's face immediately flattened in a distinctly childlike manner. "Why not?" She whined like a kicked puppy, or perhaps one that was denied a snack. Somewhere in between, more likely.

Rose got up from the chair and immediately swished it back into its position underneath the dining table. "I will not make you an exceptionally lethal poison." Rose declared, definitively. "Not unless you tell me _why_ you want it. And, ideally, who you'd like to poison, so I should know how much malice I am to feed into it."

Jade made a strange expression on her face, like she didn't understand the question. "I don't want it lethal, that would defeat the purpose!"

Rose turned back around from having begun to walk away, to look just as confusedly back at Jade. "Wolfsbane is... _intensely_ lethal, you realize this, yes? That is perhaps its only alchemical use besides the symbolic ward against lycanthropes and the undead - which is mostly ineffective, anyway."

"Yeah yeah yeah, no! I'm not here to kill anyone. Not really, anyway. Can you come here for a moment?" Jade asked, going from intense, overenthusiastic confidence to sudden nervousness almost at the snap of a finger. Shrugging her shoulders, Rose trod her way over, bare feet silent against the smooth stone floor. Jade stood up, stretching her tired limbs, and took a couple of steps closer to Rose, trying not to admire her elegant, short-sleeved robes in a too obvious manner.

This close up, Rose could see much more detail behind Jade's massive, circular glasses, and slowly, puzzle pieces began to click together at the edges of her mind. The immense, deep dark circles beneath her bright green eyes, the distinctive feeling of something evil and overprotective inside that fancy jewelry hung around her neck. Rose started to reach out slowly towards it, but Jade slapped her hand away. "Why wolfsbane, Miss Skeptic?"

"I need to put someone to sleep." Jade said, grinning. Her smile was exceptionally toothy, with two far-too-large canines taking front and center prominence in her face.

"And why wolfsbane? Valerian, lavender, passionflower, there's a dozen remedies for insomnia that exist, most of which don't even need to be turned into potions. They work just fine as tea, too." Rose asked, still confused. Jade nodded quickly and powerfully.

"Oh, yeah, if you have those too to put in it that would be great! I don't know how alchemy works that much. I just need to put someone in a coma forever. Or... 80 years? Until the end of my natural life or so. Is that possible? Please?" Jade asked, sounding a little desperate, evidently not willing to disclose the why of why she would need to put someone in a coma for 80 years.

"Kidnapping princesses and putting them in towers, Miss Skeptic?" Rose asked, getting a weird, slightly disgusted look from Jade. "Here, look at the fire for a moment." She said, changing the subject when Jade didn't respond, getting her back to her baseline of "just a bit too smiley".

Jade, assuming no malice, immediately turned towards the fire. "Sure! Why?"

Then, Rose reached around from behind her and touched the gemstone, immediately getting flung across the floor, skidding to a halt with friction and just barely bumping into one of the chairs. Her hair now a mess, she took a moment to catch her breath and fix her hairband. Jade was breathing heavily, her fingers having swollen to about twice their size, covered in black fur with the occasional stripe of whitish grey, tipped in long, ferocious looking nails. The rest of her arms had swollen similarly, and her visible skin had turned a pallid, uncomfortable shade of ashen, charcoal black, already beginning to slowly fade into Jade's natural tan color. Her arms and the accompanying muscle started to deflate, skin tightening around the shrinking limbs, claws retracting, flattening out into nails once more.

Jade let out a heavy breath, stumbling backwards a couple of steps and grabbing her head, eventually landing against one of the walls, her knees buckling inwards slightly. "Please don't do that again, Rose." She whispered. "He doesn't like when people try to touch him."

"Understood." Rose said wryly, checking her body for injuries. A couple of small little scratches across her upper arm, but thankfully, it seemed like Jade - or the thing guarding her - had mostly hit with her palm to send Rose flying. "And you need him put to sleep, forever, because he also comes out when you sleep - is that right?"

Jade nodded weakly, not having the energy to say much more. Her legs eventually gave out and she slid to the floor. Rose rubbed her hands together and smiled. "I've never seen a lycanthrope capable of partially transforming like that, nor one seemingly unaffected by the phases of the moon, nor one the result of possession via spiritual entity. You're certainly unique. Very interesting." Rose said. Jade laughed quietly at that, adjusting her hat. "Very well. I'll brew the potion for you."

Jade popped up, body still a little floppy and weak, but enough of the light returning to her eyes to show her enthusiasm. "You will? Great! Thank you so, so, so much! Should I just leave the plants with you and... stay down here while you work on it?"

Rose was the one to laugh this time. "Of course not. This will take several months of research, so I'm going to need you to plant those in my garden."

Jade was already reaching for her rucksack. "And then just come back in a couple of months? I imagine you'll send for me by-"

Rose interrupted her again. "No, I don't have the knowhow to tend to them, nor the time or desire to learn. You will stay here and grow the plants for my use. As additional payment, you will also conduct errands for me, until I've earned fair value for my labor and specialist knowledge. Understood?"

Jade didn't need to think before she found herself nodding excitedly. "Yeah, sure! It'll be fun!" Not a single scrap of consideration needed, apparently. Rose found her interest in the girl growing stronger by the minute.

Rose's smile was nothing less than smug. "Yes, it will. Oh, and, Miss Skeptic, I don't believe I caught your name - do you mind?"

Jade stretched her arms over her head and yawned quietly. "Jade! Jade Harley."

"The pleasure is mine, Jade. Do you know how to chop firewood?"

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. All views, kudos, comments, and bookmarks are appreciated.  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/classpectanon)


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